6 Things wrong with “The Last Jedi”

By now, everyone has seen The Last Jedi, the eighth installment in the inaccurately named Star Wars Trilogy. While it’s an expertly crafted movie with no wasted frames (clocking in at a tight 278 minutes), there were a few niggling errors and omissions that lowered the overall rating from a perfect “10” to a mere 8.5. Had they paid closer attention, they could have eliminated some of these discrepancies. It was just sloppy.

1. The Title

Right away, one of the smaller nitpicks reveals itself in the opening crawl. The Last Jedi. Any reasonable person would expect this movie to have a singular amount of Jedi’s in them.

Last = One

This movie should have contained a single Jedi. That’s simply not the case though. By my count, there was at least 6 other Jedi in the movie, not including Rey. It’s tough to spot them, but look at the screen grab below.

Can you see them now?

They’re tough to spot, but it’s careless little blunders like this that stop it from being a perfect movie. If you’re going to cram a movie full of this many Jedi’s, then the title should have been “The Last Couple Dozen Jedi”.

2. Vice Admiral Holdo

We are introduced to a new character in this movie, the heroic Vice Admiral Holdo. However, I sense a disturbance in the force. There is zero explanation for how she magically showed up on the Rebel ship after we last saw her fighting dinosaurs with Dr. Alan Grant.

Give us a little credit, guys.

I guess that we, the audience, are supposed to fill in the blanks ourselves about how she ended up in space, hundreds of years ago with a new purple haircut???

We also never find out who she is shaking hands with in this scene.

I mean, would it have killed the director to add a quick scene where she says “I’m Vice Admiral Laura Holdo, and now that I’ve defeated the Dinosaurs on Earth, I’m here to help the rebellion.” It’s a really quick line that would have anchored the film much better.

3. Princess Leia

Carrie Fisher owns this movie. She steals every scene she’s in and given this was her last on-screen role prior to her tragic passing, it adds extra weight and gravitas to the film. However, I can’t give the filmmakers a complete pass though, given they left in one glaring oversight.

Can you see it?

Her earrings teleport in and out of scenes with no warning whatsoever. Obviously, the filmmakers intended us to understand that this was a magic, force-enabled piece of jewelry. Fine. I have no problems with that, and in fact, it makes a lot of sense given the Star Wars mythology (like anyone could forget Yoda’s magic codpiece from Empire Strikes Back? I sure can’t!).

Unfortunately, like a lot of this movie, it just ends up looking like sloppiness.

4. An upgraded R2-D2?

Who else remembers the outcry when R2-D2 started showing new powers in the original Prequel Trilogy? Remember in Attack of the Clones when he could suddenly fly? Or in Revenge of the Sith when he takes out an entire squad of Stormtroopers?
Well, where is the fan outrage for this movie, where they literally switched robots??

R2… who??

How did they not think anyone would notice that R2-D2 is played by a completely different robot? Sure, some time has passed between Return of the Jedi and this film, so I could get the spunky little guy looking a bit worse for wear, but this? He’s not even shaped like a trash can anymore. He’s a completely different shape and everyone in the movie calls him by the wrong name (BB-88, which is pretty confusing!). So distracting!

5. Snoke

I’m probably being too hard on the movies at this point, but it’s the fan boy in me. I can’t help it.

One of the things I was most excited to see in these movies was to understand how Professor Larry Snape from the Harold Potter movies went from this:

to this:

How did he become the evil Larry Snoke? It’s hinted at all throughout the movie, but never made explicit. There is only the passing reference in this tense exchange between Snoke and Rey:

Rey: You’ll never turn me to the dark side!

Snoke: Oh no? You remind me of a little boy I used to know. A little…. wizard boy.

Rey: You used to play with little boys?

Snoke: No, not like that. I didn’t mean like –

<awkward silence>

Rey: Ew.

It never really amounts to much of anything. Again, we’re left to fill in the blanks ourselves.

6. Donald Trump

It’s probably too much to expect any piece of media nowadays to avoid taking pot shots at Trump, but did they honestly have to make him a character in the movie?

This is too much.

Donald Trump has no place in the Star Wars movies. There. I said it. You can flame me all you want, but it’s how I feel.

It didn’t help that every scene with him in it was dominated by long, rambling monologues about leaving NAFTA and Brexit. I mean, I guess it sort of fits the mythology, what with the first three prequels being entirely about trade reform policy, but still. I just found it distracting. I go to the movies to escape, not to have politics shoved in my face.

So there you have it. Six hiccups that prevented this from being a perfect movie. What do you think? Let me know in the comments and Might The Force Be Always With You.